Sunday, October 28, 2007

The GRO's digitized index of UK vital records is still a couple of years away, the microfilmed records are scarcely usable, and the paper originals have just been removed from public view.

There will never again be public access to the paper records, the index to where in the country all the births, marriages and deaths were registered, but - as so often with government IT projects - the timetable for the online version intended to replace them has collapsed. According to a spokesman for the Office for National Statistics, which is responsible for the General Records Office, "the present target is to have the online index available by mid-2009".

In the meantime, researchers are invited to use microfiche, which means, one furious researcher said, that "not even God himself is going to be able to find most of this stuff". [Link]